Frank Schirrmacher from FAZ died this week. Like Sahra Wagenknecht mentions, despite his function for a conservative newspaper he never shied an exchange and open dialogue with leftwingers. Here's an interesting statement from three years ago in which he admits those leftwingers might be right. (German)

Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric car technologies, turns all its patents over to the open source movement, here.

Here is an article about why the Football World Cup is nationalist. (German)

An interesting German article about why we don't act in the NSA affair, here.

Some fatcs about what collected data is used for, terrorism? No. (German) here

A German article about how the CIA tries to improve its image with funny tweets, here.

I really can only laugh about how the west reveals Putin's propaganda. It's ridiculous given how politicians, mass media and big companies lie to us, propaganda on a different level, here.

Some spectacular aerial shots that show how the humans ruel the world, here.

This is a picture of what's going on in the streets in Brasil at the moment. There's also an radio interview explaining the situation, here.

You don't need a big camera, often your smartphone is enough. The reason I love to shoot big cameras is the shallow depth of field. You can blur backgrounds, even in distant shots. That way you can emphasise special parts of the image. BUT, it is also cheating a bit, you can make average photos look much more dramatic or interesting that way. Really powerful photos don't need blurring to emphasise, they are strong enough by themselves. So, when you're a great photographer you can make beautiful photos even with your cellphone. The above image was taken with a Panasonic LX7. I bought it two years ago as my new pocket camera. To be honest the Canon S90 I had before and its successors are much more fun because they are even smaller, but the LX7 has a special sensor that let's you switch between different aspect ratios, like 4:3, 3:2 or 16:9, with a twist of the slide bar around the lens. It's super handy when you want to take a portrait or capture really wide shots. Because of it's unique sensor the focal length really becomes the widest when you switch to 16:9.

And the LX7 has a wonderfully bright f/1.4 lens. Paired with the image stabilizer you can create great images in literally any light. You couldn't have taken the above shot with a smartphone, it was way too dark, but with this 300 € pocket camera it's possible.

This is another example of the LX7 from the other day. Gallery at night with only the door letting in the street light. Good little camera ...

Let's start with the World Cup. I will boycott it. Why? John Oliver from HBO has some explanations here. Watch how Brasilian government forces use tear gas against the protesters, from today, here.

Protests on Taksim square in Istanbul have led to brutal police acts. Amnesty set up a support page to solidarise with the peaceful protesters. It's here.

A very interesting video that explains the very awkward story behind Julian Assange and him being trapped in the Equadorian embassy in London, here.

A video about the US EPA regulations and the consequences for the environment, here.

This is an interesting German article about the team behind Edward Snowden, here.

I really enjoyed the interview of Abby Martin with Noam Chomsky about war and imperialism, here.

Some interesting German information about the GMO industry and their strategy to occupy Europe, here.

This is a really good German article about what the TTIP would also mean, here. I have little hope it can be overturned.

If you want to do something against the plans of the Bundesregierung to advance Fracking in Germany you can sign this petition here.

Three years ago Fukushima shocked the world. Today nobody speaks about it anymore. Tons of radioactive water still seap into the Pacific every single day for the last three years and their are no signs it's going to change. The consequences for people in the region and the generations after are very bleak. Watch this!

If you're interested what real scientists have to say about the financial situation, crisis and the consequenses of debts for us and future societies, this blog site is really good.

And one amazing interview with a German professor about the emancipation from abundance in a post growth economy, it's here. It has three parts and is over two hours long but well worth it.

Now something beautiful for last, crazy flowers that look like humans, ghosts or animals, here.

I wrote an article about it earlier this year. Apple still doesn't mind using fake photos of their products. See for yourself, the upper image is what Apple is showing from this week as their MacBook Air previewing the new operating system. Below is a real MacBook Air. See the much smaller bezel above, with a strangely wide lower part. Dorky!

But this is all trivial compared to the real-world problems Mac users have to deal with today. Macs used to be reliable and the professionals' choice for decades. Because the company focuses on phones and tablets mainly today pro needs are neglected to a critical extent. Some of the most annoying and serious issues I run into on a daily basis are:

- Unreliable copying, my Macs are unable to perform a simple copy task, f.e. 20 GB of data from one external drive to another. This is critical because you’re potentially losing data.

- Apps are crashing much more often than they did before, the other day Photoshop crashed with multiple files I was working on, all was gone then.

- Yesterday the normal copy/paste command didn’t work anymore.

- After a reboot often three finger gestures don’t work as requested, so you need to un-click and re-click three finger gestures in the system preferences menu.

- With the latest firmware update switching to guest user, f.e. for private things, the display switches to a nasty blue tint and it won’t go away until you reboot into your own user profile, annoying!

- It’s pretty idiotic that you can’t upgrade RAM memory anymore. My main computer is on the edge with 16 GB, my mobile one with 8 GB of RAM is barely usable for big jobs involving a bunch of programs like Lightroom and Photoshop. Memory is soldered onto the logic boards these days, so at some pony you simply need to buy a new computer, much sooner than a couple of years ago. That’s probably how it’s supposed today, eh?!

- This morning for example system preferences wouldn't want to open. Preview didn't work and upload didn't work properly. I had to reboot.

- One physical thing that has changed for the bad is the MacSafe 2 power plug, it's TERRIBLE. It slips out of the laptop way too easy, you sometimes only have to grab the computer and it unplugs. It's also practically impossible to work with the laptop on your lap without somehow detaching the plug unintended. You really have to take an awkward position to prevent losing the power connection. Not really how a laptop should work, eh!?

- On my main laptop the sound (mids and trebles) only comes out of the right speaker. Apple tells me everything was fine.

- Open Photoshop and the computer takes ages to reboot after that, just as bad as the slowest Windows PC I had 10 years ago, even if you close it way earlier before you decide to power down.

Ever thought about why Apple abandoned the good old Kensington Lock from their computers?

Seriously, the lock served me well especially at university. You can lock your laptop to a table or heating and go for lunch leaving the computer at its place without worrying about it being stolen.

It's SUPER handy!

My main computer was worth 3.000 € when I bought it, new high-end Retina ones can be even more expensive. Is it cool not to have a lock for it? It's only a slit in the aluminium frame, no big deal. A big deal, though, when your computer gets stolen from your gallery while you went to the toilet quickly for example. No Apple laptop has the Kensington Lock slit anymore.

Can't understand this. Well, I try, maybe theft is taken into account.

I decided to collect interesting articles and post them into the blog roll instead of just sharing them on facebook so that everybody who may be interested can read them. This is only kind of a news ticker instead of an individual article that contributes to the flood of information we are exposed to. Some articles are German, most of them are English.

First there is an article about protests of McDonald's workers for higher wages, it's here,

then I found what Noam Chomsky has to say on class warfare, it's here.

I collected some articles about the protests in Brasil against the World Cup, one is here, another one here. There are also German ones here and here. This article about graffiti art expressing the problems related to the World Cup, here, is nice, too. There is an interesting German documentary about the doubtful event, here. I will boycott the games by the way, there are too many terrible things related to them, one being the deforestation of rain forest to build absurdly expensive stadiums for only four World Cup games and charge entrance fees that the normal Brasilian population could never afford. Bad!

Although I'm still not quite sure how serious this news site is, this German article about the weapon industry and how it benefits from the World Cup makes perfect sense, it's here.

I found this article about Americas relation to Nigeria interesting, here.